


Samhain

by AnnettePoudre



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-17 00:15:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19328989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnettePoudre/pseuds/AnnettePoudre
Summary: Written for a Lucius Fanfic zine. Lucius Malfoy, newly married to Narcissa Black meets his fate on Samhain during the rites, unfortunately, the aos si that he believes the forest sent to drain the life from him was not the gift of death he had been hoping.





	1. The Old Ways

Ever since the wedding he hadn’t felt much like anything at all. Depression seeped into him like the flu, making his muscles ache and his thoughts slow. He idly pulled open a heavy, velvet curtain , sunlight streaming into his study, and watched his bride, a beautiful thing, by all means, lead a parade of house elves around the gardens as they set up for the feast tonight. Samhain,  _ gods _ , but he hated this night more than any other night, for the veil was thin, and his father would return. 

He let the curtain fall, leaning back into his wingback chair. The fingers that were on the dusty curtain raked back through his greasy hair as he contemplated how he would tell his new wife that he wasn’t planning on leaving this room anytime soon. Not that he had left his room any time prior to this afternoon, save for one occasion, when Severus had come to begrudgingly check on him after the nuptials and ask if he needed any bedroom assistance via a brew. He said no, more worried Severus would poison him than cure him, because, after all, Narcissa and Severus were an item before the magical contract that the Blacks had signed with the Malfoys, at her birth, had activated.

Narcissa, who, as he pulled open the curtains again, was arranging a centerpiece, had cost him his best friend, and her happiness must be no greater than his own, but still she wore a smile that held no joy as she paraded around his grounds, draining his bank account to hold a ball on the night when no person should set foot in Malfoy Manor. Samhain was not when Lucius was at his best: memories were strong, but ghosts were even stronger.

The elves who had begun to avoid him after one too many drunken episodes over the past month gathered at the slightly ajar door into his study. He could see their fingers curling around the door jamb, two or three of them at the very least, whispering about him, his name heard over and over, “Young Master Lucius.” He was never the master of this manor, that was a title still reserved for his father, who had passed from one world to the next almost five years prior. He knew what they wanted. He had a fight with Narcissa already this morning. He needed to bathe. After all, he needed to look his best.

He used the shower in his childhood bedroom, because there was some comfort in the close quarters and white tiles, some of which had blue drawings of the countryside that played out as he scrubbed his hair. He was thinner than usual, he noted, as he ran his soapy fingers through his long hair and over his ribs that were showing. A side effect of avoiding dinner with a wife he hated and elves who hated him. He would have to learn how to cook or make peace with the elves. He doubted the latter.

   “Young master,” An elf knocked on the bathroom door “Young master, a visitor has come for you.”

   He only ever had one visitor lately, after chasing his usual business acquaintances and the social climbers away, he only ever had one. He didn’t bother to dry his hair, it stuck to the silk pajamas that he had worn for perhaps three days now, and descended the stairs in the manor barefoot. His clothes smelled like whiskey, his hair like shampoo, his house like flowers because of course Narcissa liked flowers. He spotted lilies in the foyer, and Severus inspecting them.

   “Severus.” He greeted, wishing suddenly that he had the energy or the inclination to dress up a little bit more, to show up the man he knew had fucked his wife.

   Severus’ fingers left the lilies and he grabbed three vials of pink opalescent potion out of one of the myriads of pockets on his person. “It’s Samhain.” He said as it explained the potions. “The usual, I assume?”

   Potions or poisons, Lucius tilted his head up. He wouldn’t chance dying tonight to join his father, not by his hand. “I have no need.” He sniffed, offended, and smacking away the obvious olive branch that it was. Adding insult to injury, he turned back up the stairs. “Narcissa is in the garden.” 

   He wondered if he could sleep away the rest of the afternoon, passing a clock that said four and changed that wonder to if he could sleep through the feast, the ball, the rites. Merlin, if he could sleep through the rites perhaps he could live to suffer the rest of Samhain, but Narcissa was a Black, and the Blacks ran true. He’d lose some livestock tonight; he hoped that his birds would be spared. Narcissa didn’t like the peacocks, but the peacocks, temperamental like their owner, didn’t like Narcissa either. He would have to make sure that one of his hens wasn’t at the altar tonight. A mental note, this too, slipped away as Lucius collapsed in a well-worn chair in his study, rattling an empty bottle of firewhiskey and accidentally breaking one of his glasses.

   He slipped into sleep again, his body ached. In dreams, nothing ached, but in dreams, he saw a life he couldn’t have: peace, and no worries about how much exactly those custom robes cost from France that Narcissa kept sporting. 

   There was a tapping on his face, and then a thunk of glass against wood. “Bella heard from Cissa that you’re a sloppy drunk, and I guess this proves she’s at least not a liar in that respect.”

   Lucius opened his eyes, his hair had fallen over his face. Rodolphus had settled in the seat across from him, massaging his temple. At Rodolphus’ hairline, Lucius saw a cut that sliced down towards his ear, and, beneath his ear, a bruise. Blacks ran true, just like Regulus, Bellatrix had a temper. “It doesn’t matter.” Lucius waved it off and his fingers got caught in the rat's nest of his hair.

   “Clean up, man, you should at least be respectable for the rites,” Rodolphus said, watching the only house-elf that would come in Lucius’ study pour Rodolphus a drink, a rather dull-witted elf, Dobby. “You’re a disgrace, a friendship isn’t worth ruining your reputation over. Severus isn’t much of anyone anyways. If you were fucking him, find another good fuck, if you’re upset that he fucked your wife, just think of it as a bonding experience.”

   Lucius detangled his fingers from his hair and spelled it straight. Was it that time already? Had he pissed away the day between drunkenness and dreams? He glared at Rodolphus “You’re not much better, I can tell when clothes have been slept in. I’m drunk, not blind.”

   Rodolphus looked only mildly alarmed by this and instead sipped his firewhiskey. “At least I have a shirt on.” His voice was muffled by the glass, and followed by the clinking of ice. “You look like a corpse.”

   “An attractive corpse?” Lucius said standing up, buttoning up his silk pajama shirt.

   “I’d fuck you,” Rodolphus said, raising his glass.

   Dobby, the dull-witted elf that was always more insistent on punishing himself rather than serving his master helped him get dressed, and after tugging a handful of Lucius’ hair out, was told to make the bed. Lucius could pull his own hair back into a rough ponytail and head out to the rites.

   “No feast?” Rodolphus said, sometime later, as Lucius threw himself back in the chair.

   “No appetite.” He said, his index finger curling around the heavy velvet curtains to see the feast that was starting downstairs “I’ll do the rites and go to bed, this night is not something I particularly care to be awake for.”

   “Ah yes,” Rodolphus said, laying his head back on the chair and closing his eyes “The old guard comes back tonight, doesn’t it? Malfoy Manor has always been a breeding ground for bad spirits. You didn’t bother to tell Narcissa, I presume.”

   “It’s the old way and it’s the right way.” He repeated the words Narcissa had told him a week prior after he had asked for the rites to be suspended this year.

   “The right way is going to be a right mess.” Rodolphus chuckled “Bella will get a kick out of it, I’m sure.”

   “That’s Bellatrix for you, perhaps one Samhain is enough to convince my beloved wife that the right way isn’t always right.”

   Rodolphus, always good company sober, but better company drunk told him about how Bellatrix found pleasure in torture, how she demanded that the Muggle prime minister be burned tonight at the altar in the woods before being drowned in the large lake. “She’s insane.” Lucius laughed, in disbelief at both of their misfortunes in wives.

   “She’s insane.” Rodolphus agreed “Druella Black was a con-artist who sold her daughters off to our idiot fathers, Andromeda and that young thing, oh what’s her name-”

   “Nymphadora.” Lucius supplied.

   “All the same, all insane, as you know Blacks-”

   “Yes yes, Blacks run true.”

   “Master Lestrange, Young Master, Mistress Narcissa requests yous presence for the rites.” Dobby who was wringing his bandaged fingers popped in and out and the two men let out a groan.

   The rites. It was time to face his demons, every single one of them. He hadn’t done them since his father was alive. He would make some blood offering to the aos si, or the fae, who were supposed to have inhabited Malfoy Woods since the beginning of the wood itself. The thought was that it would draw them out, to enslave them, or to be ruled by them. Lucius had nightmares of the latter, while Abraxas had dreams of the former.

 

   He followed his newlywed wife, careful to avoid betraying how much he had drunk with Rodolphus in the study, His foot caught on a root, damned root. His foot caught on a stick, damned stick. Finally, Rodolphus, suffering much like Lucius was, threw his arm around Lucius’ shoulder and he returned the favor. Narcissa turned back to the two of them and rolled her eyes, the ceremonial candle in her hand lighting the way through the well-worn forest path to the altar.

The altar was a run-down stone thing with inscriptions in a language that no one could read anymore, dead languages to summon dead people. The veil was thin, rites would suck the dead out of every nook and cranny of this land, the grass grew well on Malfoy Land, the blood of every Muggle, animal, and prodigal son that had been tortured on the grounds made for fertile soil.

   Narcissa, the glowing hostess of the hour, smiled and turned back to the small group of three, Bellatrix was almost dancing in the leaves beside her. Rites were rarely done anymore, but they were old blood, they were pureblood, and this was simply what was done on Samhain.

   “Dobby,” Narcissa said, looking down as if expecting the elf to have known he was going to be called out in the woods in the early hours of the night. 

   “Mistress bes calling Dobby.” The elf came, not alone, but with a small pig in his arms.

   The Sacrifice. A piglet. Fertility. Lucius could feel revulsion making the liquor slosh around in his empty stomach. Already?

   Narcissa handed him the dagger. “Husband.” She said, the word only worsened his sickness.

   The pig squirmed in the dull-witted house-elf’s arms, and Bellatrix actually had the audacity to giggle. The world tilted to one side and then abruptly to the other and Lucius realized how awful it would be to stab himself while he was trying to perform the rites. Although, a small part of him realized that if he did stab himself he would at least not have to deal with what was summoned.

   Rodolphus had righted him, warm hands on his shoulder. He turned back to his friend, grateful that someone was there for him in the midst of his own woods. “What’s the matter, Lucius?” Bellatrix’s voice cut through his drunkenness and made his heart skip “Not man enough to kill a pig?”

   “Put the pig on the damned altar, elf,” Lucius said, his words slightly slurred, but no one noticed right? No one noticed how much he hated Samhain?

   He got to his knees before the stone epithet, it was now as high as he was and the pig struggled but was stuck by someone’s magic, perhaps a helpful Rodolphus, but more likely a bloodthirsty Bellatrix.

   The pig had beady little eyes that reflected the moonlight that was coming in through patches in the trees, the pig did not move as he raised the dagger, dead already, or stunned, or just scared and then before he could drop the dagger there was a crack of a tree falling.

   “What was that?” Narcissa sounded mildly annoyed. “It’s ruining the ceremony.”

   There were popping and crunching and then, oddly enough cursing. He turned to Bellatrix but she was silent with her wand withdrawn, pointing at something behind the altar.

   Lucius stood up, patting down his pockets for his own wand and realizing he had forgotten it. 

Narcissa let out a girlish scream and grabbed his arm, her nails digging into his skin. Had his father returned? Returned to torture them all?

A woman in form-fitting clothing that was not from this world  glowed in the dark, covered by a fine dusting of stars, a small curvy figure with a wild mane of hair.the forest seemed to have sprung from it, remnants of its birth littering her curls. Leaves, sticks, moss, and pine needles gave her a halo and she was holding some kind of gold offering. Rodolphus spoke before he could.

“Aos Si.” Rodolphus’ Gaelic was rusty, but he knew. They had somehow summoned an otherworldly creature to the ritual tonight; Narcissa would be over the moon.

“What?” The fairy said and her eyes moved to him immediately and she took a step backward. “Lucius...Malfoy?”

“Me?” Lucius croaked. An otherworldly being had come for him? Perhaps he had stabbed himself earlier.

“What do you want with my husband?” Narcissa asked in awe “Are you...perhaps a leannan?”

She looked down at her hands, the gold she was holding caught his eye briefly, it looked like jewelry, did aos si bring offerings on Samhain? She closed her hands and looked up at the sky, her jaw quivered a bit and she turned back to the four of them, starlight in her eyes. Of course, she was a leannan. She was beautiful.

“If you’re here for Lucius, and Lucius does not fall in love with you, you are his slave.” Bellatrix said “Isn’t that right? Oh, Cissa, of course, your first Samhain would summon an actual fairy, you are without a doubt the most per-”

“Am I at Malfoy Manor now?” She said looking past the four of them, at something no human could see, but she could see.

“You’re in the woods, but the Manor is close.” Narcissa explained hurriedly “Please, will you come back to my feast? It’s about to begin, after the rites, of course, we always do the rites. It’s the proper thing to do.”

The rites, of course, were forgotten in the excitement over the fairy. The leannan was barefoot as she followed Narcissa and Bellatrix back to the garden. Her foot caught on a root, which made her hiss. Her foot caught on sticks, and she hopped a bit to alleviate the pain. The gold chain swung as she walked, catching the light and Lucius’ eye.

“A real aos si.” Rodolphus muttered to himself. “She’s as beautiful as the stories told. Are you in love? I will gladly take your place.”

After all, if he did fall in love with the leannan, he would be her host and she would drain the life from him. It sounded much better than dying by stabbing, it sounded much quicker than drinking himself to death. He would love her, he decided, to die a death worth the Malfoy title. Everyone would talk about how Lucius was the first Malfoy to be chosen by the old gods, to be given the chance to love them like a good pureblood would do. Respecting the old ways, and dying by them.

“I am in love.” He reassured himself, and Rodolphus. “I am in love with her.”

Leannan was quiet, and she had brown eyes that would sometimes glisten with the stars. She would turn her head upwards when the stars were in her eyes and return them to the skies. A wonderful creature that did not talk, but ate the food she was given without complaint. She shimmered with pixie dust and kept her hands on her lap. After the feast was over, and the leannan picked more forest out of her hair (this too, she returned to the earth, Lucius was convinced this was how nature grew, through her kindness, and not naturally), Bellatrix almost bounced on her seat, pointing her steak knife at Lucius.

“Are you in love? Are you to be the real sacrifice tonight, Lucius?” Bellatrix drew out his name as a hiss.

He turned to the leannan who was staring at him with that otherworldly sense like she already knew the answer. “Of course, who could not love perfection.” He said, but the firewhiskey made it all come out in one word.

Finally, he could die.

“Ah, well, Narcissa, you will be a rich widow, to be sure,” Bellatrix said and there was a clink as she resumed eating.

“Malfoy.” The leannan said, her voice like the wind, breathless and airy “Lucius.” He loved the way the aos si said his name.

The fairy reached over and grabbed his hand, he noticed that her fingernails were dirty and that she had thorns that had scraped ancient writing that no one understood anymore into the backs of her hand.

Her sleeve rode up and she had the beginnings of a rune on her arm, from this angle it looked like the Celtic rune for entrance. He couldn’t be sure. Her brown eyes looked into his and he felt something he hadn’t felt in forever: heat. The leannan had sealed the rite, he was enslaved to her now, a host for her, a life force for her to drain. Then, he would die.

“Leannan.” He whispered, the whole table had gone quiet.

That night, he waited and waited for her to take his life, and the leannan granted him something he was sure he wasn’t going to get until later: peace. His father did not visit, and when he visited the aos si, she no longer glowed with stardust. Was his life force not sustaining her? Would Lucius Malfoy be responsible for the death of an aos si? Panic sprung to life and clutched at his heart. What rumors there would be!

She was standing with the gold necklace in her hand still, looking out the window and watching the ghosts of Samhain patrol the grounds in an eerie gala that no living person was invited . Her hair was still wild and when she turned back to look at him, a flicker of fear, starlight running down her cheeks.

The veil was thin, and her nightgown was thinner. He saw the rune on her arm again, and she hurried and pulled down the sleeve when she caught him staring at him. Secrets of the aos si, he presumed. Her eyes met his and quickly looked back out the window.

“Mister Mal-Lucius.” She caught herself and her cheeks flushed a brilliant red.

He stood beside her, feeling the heat of her magic wash over him, making his heart beat faster. The aos si spoke no spells, made no movements, only with a glance, could she steal enough energy to make him forget to breathe. “It’s my childhood room.” He admitted “I hope it’s comfortable for you, Leannan. I am not-”

“It’s not...Leannan,” She took a deep breath, her face turning towards her, her eyes reflecting the moonlight “It’s Hermione.”

“Hermione.” He tested. A good name for a fairy, his fairy.

She fidgeted and the gold offering was being turned over in her hand as she watched the ghosts dance where they once feasted. Two circles, and a gold disk, a glass bauble that was broken in the middle. He had only seen these in books at Hogwarts before. The aos si’s offering was the remains of a time turner.


	2. New Offerings

Hermione sometimes got this  _ malaise _ in fall, when the leaves turned she often turned inwards, spending more time in the library than outdoors. Lucius often teased her, telling her that it was because the aos si were calling her back home. Lucius was sitting with her in the library, checking, and then double-checking the guest list for the feast tonight.

Severus and Narcissa, now wedded, a friendship, now smoothed over thanks to Hermione’s uncanny clinginess to Severus, who she, at first, would sometimes call Professor absentmindedly. Rodolphus, now a widower, now sober, thanks to Hermione’s doggedness. Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, friends that were half her age now, but she was insistent that she befriend them, were now up-and-comers at the Ministry. Sirius Black, Narcissa’s ill-mannered cousin, and of course his other half Remus Lupin. The guest list was long, many of Hermione’s pet projects were bound to attend, Lucius had never had so many friends who wanted so little of his bank account.

“Are they making that pie I like?” She asked flipping a page across from him.

He looked up from the parchment at her, she was wearing a short sleeve dress, the runes, which he discovered were not runes at all, but the word MUDBLOOD, gone now, it had left in 1980, after a row they had one night. Her hair was twisted up into a messy bun, time had been good to her, she looked not a day over twenty-three.

“That disgusting banana offy thing?” Lucius screwed up his face “It wouldn’t be Samhain without it.”

“Banoffee.  _ Severus _ likes it.” She said, looking up from her book at him.

“Severus has lost his mind then.” He scoffed “It’s not very traditional.”

“Since when are things traditional around here? I don’t recall quiche being a big thing when druids walked the earth.” 

Nothing was traditional with Hermione. The first Samhain after she had appeared, a year after he was ready to die, he made a small feast in her bedroom, his old childhood room, with burgers and fries at her request. She had told him quietly a few things that night while crying into her food. 

She was not a leannan, but a Muggle-born. She was not eternal, but born in September of 1979, a year that had not happened yet. She ate fries as he tried to piece back together her time turner, the gold offering that never left her side, a small collection of  tempus dust and glass shards that he recognized as a broken hourglass that she had managed to save. She told him quietly after all the food was eaten that she was afraid to leave her room, that she was going to ruin time itself.

Lucius, on that night, realized what it meant to give his life to the leannan, because if his leannan was a mudblood, then he would have to abandon the cause. He watched the woman he had forced himself to love in order to die wipe her own tears away. Starlight. He grabbed her hand, still wet, and squeezed. On Samhain, there was always a sacrifice for the rites, and tonight he was sure it would be him. “Hermione.” He had said, his voice soft. “Next year will be  _ different _ .”

The next year was worse. Torn between his marriage, his aos si, and the cause, the depression turned into anger. He split off from Narcissa shortly after, and instead of fighting in the war, isolated himself in with Hermione, and the majority of the seventies was spent alone existing in fear with her. The two of them were frozen, worried that any wrong move would split time apart, and take her away. Thus began the rumors that Lucius had died early during Voldemort’s rise to power, a sacrifice for the cause. A loyal death eater until his untimely end. Until they were found by another loyalist: Rodolphus.

Rodolphus came after the war, to hide in a manor he thought largely abandoned, only to find the couple. Hermione pulled him from the bottom of a bottle, and later, from Bellatrix who had come to find her husband as the Ministry was trying to find her. Bellatrix had instead, found Hermione, and Hermione, unarmed, was found bleeding out in the foyer. It was that night that Rodolphus divorced himself from his wife and made her into the sacrifice. “For protection,” Rodolphus had chanted at the stone altar, shaking from fear and withdrawal, as he disposed of her body in the woods. “For the aos si.”

She was resting now, her eyes fluttering shut, the book no longer holding her attention, and Rodolphus contented himself in picking up the Prophet that was detailing Lucius’ godson’s first forays into politics. Draco was a bit of a spoiled brat, but Narcissa and Severus doted on him so severely, Lucius doubted that he would have turned out any other way. He was coming of course, with some red-headed Weasley girl that Hermione seemed a bit pleased over.

“Lucius.” Her voice was soft, he looked up from the guest list and smiled at her. She had turned to lay directly in the sunlight, like a lazy cat.

“Yes, my fairy?” He asked and scratched a note next to Remus Lupin about his meat preferences.

“We should do the rites this year, with some berries, or what not.” She waved her hand lazily and yawned.

He hated the rites. The rites meant death, and they had seen enough death in the last war. “You never want to do the rites anymore,” Lucius said with an eyebrow raised. “It’s such a messy affair and blood and bananas do-”

“No blood sacrifices, just plant offerings or something. It’s important that the traditions are remembered and all that, in this book it says that the rites are good for the land, calms the spirits or raises them.” She showed him the cover as if it had anything on it that explained her sudden need to do something Lucius despised.

“I think it’s a good idea.” Rodolphus agreed from behind The Prophet “Blood and Banoffee.”

“You’re just being contrary,” Lucius said rolling up the now annotated guestlist and sending it to the kitchens.

She stretched and sat up, her hair falling in front of her face, as wild as it was when he found her in the forest thirty years ago. “Let’s go find some offerings.”

“The elv-”

“It’s about the intent, Lucius, I think this might finally solve your Samhain problem once and for all.”

He had never, not in thirty years, had his usual Samhain visitor. He wanted to tell her that her very presence in Malfoy Manor had scared his father’s ghost away, but Rodolphus was already up and helping his Hermione put on her jacket.

 

Leaves fell around them as Hermione, armed with her potion ingredient basket (a gift from Severus many years ago), dragonhide gloves, and two rather large hounds that had no discipline whatsoever but all the enthusiasm, harvested some berries. “The book said that the ghosts only come when they are summoned,” Hermione explained to the bush. “Blood rites, other sacrifices all call them to the land, but they’re looking for something.” 

She didn’t enumerate what sacrifices. It was unspoken between the three of them. The last war had taken so much from them all. Hermione made them all willing participants, a dangerous game for two blood traitors and a Muggle-born. A dangerous game they had often lost.

In 1994, she had been attacked in Diagon Alley, Lucius knew the attackers so well, he had been to their house for drinks a week prior. Rodolphus and he were helpless as she was cursed from behind. Lucius had been cursed, held under a Crucio until he was sure that his blood had boiled his veins and turned his muscles to sous vide. Rodolphus still had traitor branded on his arm, burned into his skin magically. 

When she woke, she found that they could never have a child. When she woke, she told them both that there was no neutrality in this war as long as she was a Muggle-born. The next few years they would sacrifice many to the stone pillar in the woods until no one could call Lucius a traitor, until Lucius was sure Hermione could go out in public again. 

Things had changed since the war.

“So if we give them a plant-based offering, a gift of the land, they will leave, now that they’ve gotten what they came for.” She stood up and smiled back at the three of them, the forest was lively even though it was fall. 

Three more joined their party as they were harvesting mushrooms, Severus bent down and began to help Hermione, believing she was gathering ingredients, while Draco and Narcissa chatted up Lucius about any pull he may have within the Ministry as a member of the Wizengamot.

The group grew larger as the sun began to set, her basket nearly full with everything from berries to rare ingredients (a few of which Severus had tried to take for himself, after all, it was late in the season for aconite). A dozen people now, most of the guests of their yearly feast, gathered offerings with Hermione; flowers, plants, and wood. Two of the Weasley’s (why on earth were there so many of them) were singing a song by the Weird Sisters and swinging pieces of yew to conduct their strange parade through the forest. Conversation and laughter as old friends caught up with new ones, a timid Rabastan was explaining his research to Hermione who was giving him a patient smile and trailing him and Rodolphus. Harry Potter and Luna Lovegood’s very young children were playing with the dogs as they wove in and out of the trees.

“It’s much different.” Rodolphus commented as they walked down the path that he studiously had avoided all these years “Do you remember the night  she arrived?” Rodolphus laughed, squeezing his offering, some reeds that they had found earlier “We were both piss drunk and miserable.”

The stone altar came into view as the sunset turned into a purple twilight, the shadows from the trees pushing everyone closer together. Hermione turned back in front of the altar, which had only one offering: her broken time turner now tarnished with time (an offering they had made the year she said she had left the future to come to him) and covered in dirt. 

“Oh, I see everyone made it.” She said, and set her basket down on the altar “We are making an offering to the aos si that dwells in this forest.” A dog barked, Lucius rolled his eyes, what happened to ceremony?

Hermione, ever graceful, did not seem phased by the interruption. “And then we’ll feast and dance, and eat banoffee?” Her eyes traveled to Lucius, glittering with starlight, with happiness.

The altar where they had met was now covered in offerings from the group, the children were organizing the flowers into some kind of strange display, and Hermione helped until the two Potter brats were satisfied with the mess they had made. Lucius appreciated how Hermione handled children because Lucius was sure he could never be a father.

“Ready?” Lucius said as she came back over to where he was chatting with Rodolphus. “No ghosts tonight?”

“Or more ghosts than ever.” She gave him a smile and they followed the large group of revelers out of Malfoy woods, the way lit with Lumos and moonlight.

“Mischievous fairy.” Rodolphus teased. “Aren’t you done with him yet?”

“I think he has a few more years left in him yet,” Hermione said, “once I’m done sucking the life out of him, do you think you’ll be available?”

“Always a servant for the aos si.” He made a mock bow as they exited the forest and began to hike up the grounds to the feast.

That night, as everyone ate, as Hermione held his hand under the table, candlelight making her into an otherworldly beauty with a talent for making other people laugh, Lucius was not quite sure that she was human. Despite the lines on her face, despite the times that she had bled for him, cried for him, and sacrificed for him, it was tonight, under the moonlight, surrounded by all their friends, that Lucius was sure she was a leannan. No woman he had ever had the chance to meet in his fifty-some years on this earth would match up to his Hermione.

No ghosts came, because the feast lasted until well after midnight, and every room in Malfoy Manor was full. Death was replaced with life, and sacrifices replaced with offerings. She was sitting out in the garden, the candles had burnt down to their last, drinking tea with Severus and Rodolphus as he came back out from showing the Potters their suite of rooms. Severus was complaining about his students, and she was laughing into her cup.

“Lucius!” She called, waving at him. “You’re missing it, some student of Severus’ apparently turned himself into a newt.”

The gardens glittered with candles that floated around the roses, the tables were being cleared by the elves (all clothed, all paid, much to his chagrin). He was sure Samhain was when Malfoy Manor was at its best. He took a seat next to his fairy and kissed her on the cheek, taking her free hand and squeezing it. He picked up a fork and began digging into a slice of banoffee pie.

“And so, this child, I swear they must be coming to me without brains anymore, dropped the  _ entire jar _ of fluxweed into his potion and of course it destabilized it, because-”

“The entire jar?” She said and laughed. “How did he ever manage? A first year?”

“Flitwick.” The two of them said together and all four of them laughed.

As their conversation wore on, and no ghosts came, Lucius was sure that it was a result of thirty years of sacrifice that he could finally sit amongst his friends and live in a world with no madmen vying for his Gringotts account. Rodolphus would later tell him it was thirty years of Hermione that allowed him to sit amongst his friends in a world where his wife, a Muggle-born, could work, and live without prejudice.

Finally, they could live.

**Author's Note:**

> On aos si: The aos sí are a race comparable to the fairies or elves. They are appeased with offerings, and care is taken to avoid angering or insulting them. The aos sí are generally described as stunningly beautiful.
> 
> On the Leannan: As described by Yeats: “The Leannan Sidhe seeks the love of mortals. If they refuse, she must be their slave; if they consent, they are hers, and can only escape by finding another to take their place. The fairy lives on their life, and they waste away. Death is no escape from her.”


End file.
